Apache HTTP Server vs Mongoose Web Server vs lighttpd

Overview

Apache HTTP Server

Stacks64.5K

Followers22.8K

Votes1.4K

GitHub Stars3.8K

Forks1.2K

Mongoose Web Server

Stacks12

Followers37

Votes3

GitHub Stars12.3K

Forks2.9K

lighttpd

Stacks156

Followers133

Votes27

Apache HTTP Server vs Mongoose Web Server vs lighttpd: What are the differences?

Architecture and Performance: Apache HTTP Server is a traditional multi-process, multi-threaded server, which may impact performance under heavy loads. Mongoose Web Server, on the other hand, follows an event-driven, single-threaded architecture, making it more lightweight and efficient for handling concurrent connections. lighttpd, known for its speed and efficiency, uses a single-threaded architecture like Mongoose, making it suitable for high-performance scenarios.
Configuration and Extensibility: Apache HTTP Server has a powerful configuration system with numerous modules that provide extensive customization options but may require more complex configurations. Mongoose Web Server offers a simpler configuration setup with basic options but lacks the extensive module ecosystem of Apache. lighttpd focuses on simplicity and performance, providing a minimalistic configuration approach that is easy to set up and maintain.
Resource Usage: Apache HTTP Server is known to consume more system resources, especially memory, due to its multi-process nature. Mongoose Web Server and lighttpd, being more lightweight servers, require fewer resources to operate efficiently, making them suitable for resource-constrained environments or embedded systems.
Operating System Support: Apache HTTP Server has broad support for various operating systems, including Windows, making it a versatile choice for different environments. Mongoose Web Server primarily targets embedded systems and platforms like IoT devices, often optimized for specific operating systems. lighttpd, with its focus on performance and efficiency, offers robust support for Linux and Unix-based systems.
Community and Support: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community with extensive documentation, forums, and resources available for users. Mongoose Web Server and lighttpd, while having dedicated user bases, may not offer the same level of community support and documentation as Apache, potentially impacting troubleshooting and learning resources for users.

In Summary, Apache HTTP Server, Mongoose Web Server, and lighttpd differ in terms of architecture, performance, configuration, resource usage, operating system support, and community resources, catering to diverse needs and preferences in web server technology.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, Mongoose Web Server, lighttpd

Daniel

Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development

May 25, 2021

Decided

For us, NGINX is a lite HTTP server easy to configure. On our research, we found a well-documented software we a lot of support from the community.

We have been using it alongside tools like certbot and it has been a total success.

We can easily configure our sites and have a folder for available vs enabled sites, and with the nginx -t command we can easily check everything is running fine.

289k views289k

Comments

Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
Install apache and tomcat.
Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
Create users on RHEL for application support team.
other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k

Comments

greg00m

Mar 9, 2020

Needs advice

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities.
Ready, aim fire!

766k views766k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server	Mongoose Web Server	lighttpd
The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.	Mongoose is built on top of Libmongoose embedded library, which can turn anything into a web server in 5 minutes worth of effort and few lines of code. Libmongoose is used to serve Web GUI on embedded devices, implement RESTful services, RPC frameworks (e.g. JSON-RPC), handle telemetry data exchange, and perform many other tasks in various different industries including aerospace, manufacturing, finance, research, automotive, gaming, IT.	lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 3.8K	GitHub Stars 12.3K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks 2.9K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 64.5K	Stacks 12	Stacks 156
Followers 22.8K	Followers 37	Followers 133
Votes 1.4K	Votes 3	Votes 27
Pros & Cons
Pros 479 Web server 305 Most widely-used web server 217 Virtual hosting 148 Fast 138 Ssl support Cons 4 Hard to set up	Pros 1 Light weight 1 Web server 1 Easy to configure	Pros 7 Lightweight 6 Easy setup 2 Full featured 2 Proxy 2 Virtal hosting

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, Mongoose Web Server, lighttpd?

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Caddy

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.

Related Comparisons

Apache HTTP Server vs Mongoose Web Server vs lighttpd: What are the differences?

Architecture and Performance: Apache HTTP Server is a traditional multi-process, multi-threaded server, which may impact performance under heavy loads. Mongoose Web Server, on the other hand, follows an event-driven, single-threaded architecture, making it more lightweight and efficient for handling concurrent connections. lighttpd, known for its speed and efficiency, uses a single-threaded architecture like Mongoose, making it suitable for high-performance scenarios.
Configuration and Extensibility: Apache HTTP Server has a powerful configuration system with numerous modules that provide extensive customization options but may require more complex configurations. Mongoose Web Server offers a simpler configuration setup with basic options but lacks the extensive module ecosystem of Apache. lighttpd focuses on simplicity and performance, providing a minimalistic configuration approach that is easy to set up and maintain.
Resource Usage: Apache HTTP Server is known to consume more system resources, especially memory, due to its multi-process nature. Mongoose Web Server and lighttpd, being more lightweight servers, require fewer resources to operate efficiently, making them suitable for resource-constrained environments or embedded systems.
Operating System Support: Apache HTTP Server has broad support for various operating systems, including Windows, making it a versatile choice for different environments. Mongoose Web Server primarily targets embedded systems and platforms like IoT devices, often optimized for specific operating systems. lighttpd, with its focus on performance and efficiency, offers robust support for Linux and Unix-based systems.
Community and Support: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community with extensive documentation, forums, and resources available for users. Mongoose Web Server and lighttpd, while having dedicated user bases, may not offer the same level of community support and documentation as Apache, potentially impacting troubleshooting and learning resources for users.

Apache HTTP Server vs Mongoose Web Server vs lighttpd

Overview